Arsip Kategori: newsworthy

JAKARTA (JP): She sings well, dresses elegantly and also knows how to act. Krisdayanti is probably an Indonesian 21st century icon. And yes, she is on the Net, too, with her “”still-under-construction”” personal website. Check out http://www.krisdayanti.com if you are curious.

Often, a site with a domain name that uses one’s own name, personal site for short, is sometimes not established by the owner of the name. It could be established by a fan or a group of fans. The beautiful Malaysian singer Siti Nurhaliza, for example, has a site (www.sitinurhaliza.net) established by a geek fan.

The site http://www.leary.com was constructed by young people who had met or adored the deceased Timothy Leary. He was the fascinating ex-Harvard lecturer who wrote Chaos and Cyberculture and whose ashes were scattered in outer space.

The site http://www.leary.com was picked as the Net’s Best Site in 1996. By that time, there were not so many marvelous web designs: no sound, no video and no Flash technology. Flash, by Macromedia (www.macromedia.com for a free software download), creates animated vector-based websites.

Speaking of Flash technology, there is one local personal site supported by Flash: a site set up by techno-fiend media mogul Peter F. Gontha (www.gontha.com).

Okay, Krisdayanti and Siti Nurhaliza are pretty. Leary was a guru who envisioned cyberspace far before the Internet hype took root in the 1990s. If a businessman as great as Peter Fritz Gontha establishes his personal site with amazing vision, does this mean that he really keeps track of new technology in all media?

To find the answer, I logged onto http://www.gontha.com. With the so-called sophisticated Flash technology, I had to stare at a very long and boring “”loading”” tag. After that, I registered in out of curiosity. Unfortunately, nothing happened when I logged in again after registration. Ah, this is either a ghost site, a website that is no longer maintained but that remains available for viewing, or the owner just wants to keep the domain name. No vision yet.

Get a domain name

There are two ways to get a personal site. You can purchase a domain name (see http://www.netsol.com), or you can join a provider of free space, (e.g. http://www.geocities.com). Gontha’s site takes the first route. Many recreational users take the second.

Joining the second group, I used to have one at http://www.xoom.com before http://www.NBCi.com bought xoom.com. Soon afterward, there were none. By the way, it was really fun designing, typing and posting it. For someone like me — who cannot sing beautifully or envision the Net radically — I needed to give an intro of who I was. I pasted up a picture of myself. I also mentioned what I liked and did not like.

I really felt great about it until one day a friend of mine stopped by my site. He was a computer nerd who lived in San Francisco, USA. He said, “”It’s too naive””. I didn’t understand at the time. As I found out more about Internet security and privacy, I began to understand. I was just too naive to type my real name, age and address. This could be critical.

Back when there was only a small number of people logging onto the Net, online crime and information abuse was zilch. Today, even a college student like Steven Haryanto can say “”nothing personal”” explaining his dubious sites (e.g. http://www.kilkbca.com, http://www.klikbac.com, and so forth) that snared customers who mistyped Bank Central Asia (BCA)’s web address http://www.klikbca.com. The crime stops there though: he did not take advantage of people who mistakenly typed in their passwords. BCA accepted an apology before the matter was sent to court.

Madonna has fought for her domain name in court. The last time I logged in, her site http://www.madonna.com was a retired or invisible site (one which doesn’t exist anymore and results in a “”not found”” message when you type the address). Her domain name is her trademark. She has, of course, many bodyguards to protect her privacy.

You may want to look around for personal sites in your leisure time. There are millions of other personal sites you can look at besides the ones I mentioned above. Log in to http://www.yahoo.com and click “”members”” to view some. Or click geocities, which is owned by yahoo, for a browse. You may want to check out some other search engines, too.

Alternatively, you can randomly type in anyone’s name with .com or .net, for example http://www.miladay.com, which is not mine. Sometimes, typing a name may lead to a different site than the one I expected to find. I typed http://www.clinton.com to find out more about Bill Clinton, yet I found a registered investment advisor firm.

If you are interested in having your own personal site, please consider some rules. Rule No. 1: know how to design well and efficiently. Let the visitors enjoy it page by page. A bit of knowledge about web technology is Rule No. 2. Actually you can upload anything with a simple program like Microsoft Word. Last of all, Rule No. 3: beware of what and how to reveal information about yourself on the web. See but not touch. Touch but … keep it for yourself. It can be a cruel cyberworld out there.

For three days I haven’t seen news or clicked any link in detikcom, I just felt good. I knew about the fire in Grand Indonesia, I heard my hubby mumbling when reading Kompas. For three days I learned bawang merah is some kind of gone into thin air after its price dropped a little bit. An old trick to raise price. For three days I learned nothing new.

Fact is, I got cold. And I need something to escape with: hot orange juice and good readings. CS Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Higgins-Clark are amongst the must-read, at least once in my lifetime. Probably poems, too. I loved Wordsworth once. Or local writers like Marah Roesli? Ah, I need something lighter.

Stop.

I don’t need bad news. CBS even cut loss by providing good news. Viewer age remains a concern while CBS has traditionally attracted more total U.S. viewers than its competitors, its average viewer tends to be older, beyond the demographic groups that many advertisers prefer to reach. To date this season, the network’s median age is 52.9, compared with 45.2 for Fox, 48.4 for NBC and 49.6 for ABC. This year, perhaps trying to appeal to younger viewers, CBS will introduce four mixed martial-arts shows Saturday nights in the United States.

What about Liputan 6 whom once attracted viewers with unabashed Ira Koesno-Arief Suditomo duet? What about Metro TV smiley anchorwomen? Ten TV stations in Jakarta are jumbled content. What about our younger viewers. Yay, not that easy. They are kind of blogging and facebooking for news. They even unaware of happenings due to their “gw bgt” attitude. They went for fun karaoke or singing contest. They are singing their heart out and still need push entertainment served to their laps. Me or younger generations are looking for pull news. The hectic, bad news provided by television is crowding out.

“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment. (Dr Warren G. Bennis)